Arsenio Hall

Watching him in Celebrity Apprentice this season got me wondering . . . why did his talk show and career tank?
Watching him on Celebrity Apprentice, he seems like he could probably start a successful talk show tomorrow night.

Things that make you go, hmmmmm

A.Hall

I've wondered the same thing, OP.
Arsenio must have pissed off some important people the entertainment biz.

He seemed to have it all twenty years ago, not just with the talk show but also with the party machine. And then, poof.

I love the name Arsenio, if I had a butt baby I would name it that

What has he been doing all these years? On the Apprentice last night he kept talking about his "New York office." All talk, or does he really have some kind of office there?

He and his staff are incompetent.

He was great on Designing Women.

Alice%20Ghostley

I think he's gay and someone threatened to out him so he went away.

Yeah, Arsenio got caught up in that Eddie Murphy Johnny Gill circle. He probably made a nice piece of change off the show and just decided to be reclusive so he could live his life out of the spotlight.

He had a good run. Fame is fleeting. Next!

His show was about three degrees from Maury Povich. Not too many Rhodes scholars stopped by to chat.

R9 - yes, I believe he made around $60 million from that show. That's a lot of money, particularly 20 years ago.
I don't think he's hurting. He always seemed like a nice guy.

Arsenio's Show was hugely popular and groundbreaking.

His talk show eventually faded, but it was HUGE.
Bill Freaking CLINTON made a guest appearance, to play the sax.
Huge for its time.

His show didn't fade. It just disappeared overnight it seems. He says he quit to be a good single father.

He was especially cocky, saying, "I'm gonna kick Leno's ass" when Leno became the Tonight Show host. That quote and Arsenio's pic were the cover of TIME magazine!
Plus, it was widely rumored he planted the gay activists in his audience. They stood up and yelled at him -- and he smacked them down hard. He got a lot of press for that -- but then it became a serious rumor he planted the hecklers. I think they claimed to be ACT-UP.
I think R8 is right.

Okay, it wasn't TIME magazine. It was EW. My bad.

R17

Not ACT-UP... Queer Nation, R17.
He was an asshole about gay stuff. But then almost everyone on TV was back then.

R19, someone accused him of not having any gays on his show and he had, so he got mad. I don't blame him, that was edgy at the time.

I enjoyed his show, but he was such a suck up to celebrities. I just loved his smile.
Did he ever marry?

He had Lea Delaria on as well as Rosie. Lea said he gave her a career.
He spoke of the rumor on the Paramount lot that he and Eddie Murphy were fighting over Mike Tyson.

According to his wikipedia:
"However, the ratings for Hall's program began to struggle and he also butted heads with Paramount, his distributor. The tension arose from Hall's invitation to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in February 1994. Hall gave the entire hour to Farrakhan and did not do anything else besides conduct an interview. The program was canceled in May 1994."
I'm guessing he knew he was cancelled and just said fuck it when he gave the hour to Farrakhan.
Also, according to his wikipedia page, he was on the speech team in college with Nancy Cartwright. Is Arsenio a clam?

I used to love The Arsenio Hall Show. It was really the first of its kind in the sense that it was young, hip and black entertainment. The dog pound made it so fun. That said, I always thought that Arsenio had a very nasty streak that showed itself from time to time while he was interviewing (see Whitney Houston and Taylor Dane interviews), as if he was trying to out people and put them on blast. It was a great show with great ratings so I think maybe he pissed off the network execs; maybe they threatened to out him..not sure but maybe he's not a very nice person. I'd love to know what happened.

Anonymous

Who is he married to? Or does he have a sweetheart. Haven't heard that he has any children. That seems odd for a successful man.

[quote]I always thought that Arsenio had a very nasty streak that showed itself from time to time
Most people with their own television shows have been known to be that way

Rosie%2C%20Ellen%2C%20Oprah%2C%20Anderson

Arsenio had every A-Lister of the time on his show, even people like Madonna and Tom Cruise, who were then at the peak of their fame are rarely did talk shows. And then he was just gone overnight.

R27 - supposedly he was with an older woman years ago - or so he said.
However it doesn't take a scientist to figure out that he's gay.

yea that older woman was his mama

Mama

His talk show brought a youthfulness and an edge to late night that was desperately needed back then (and is needed now). It was nice to someone who at the time was young and laid back rather than the usual old stiff white guys that host late night shows.
I also think it's strange how his show ended so abruptly. Even if ratings were starting to struggle, networks usually don't cancel a show THAT fast as long as it still has decent ratings. It all seemed so strange. I think if they had given the set a makeover after having the same one for so long, that might have helped.

It was over for Arsenio when the Tonight Show started to feature black musical acts. After that he lost his unique niche.

Even when Leno was young.. he was old. He just tries to imitate others.

Arsenio wanted more money. His ratings were falling so Paramount wanted to give him less money. So he just walked away. Hence the abrupt end.

I remember when he had Janet Jackson on there and he was on his knees trying to get her to do that chair routine from her video.

[quote]Arsenio wanted more money. His ratings were falling so Paramount wanted to give him less money. So he just walked away. Hence the abrupt end.
Ahh, the bad choices we make.

Diane Chambers

Arsenio has a son.
Also, one of the reasons Arsenio just kind of disappeared was that his show was syndicated by Paramount, not attached to any network. So he lost his CBS affiliates when Letterman's show started and he also got screwed over by Fox creating the Chevy Chase show and that fucking up his timeslot with his Fox affiliates. It pushed his time slot back and he couldn't get that back even when Chevy tanked.

Soon after his talk show ended he did a sit-com that lasted about a minute. It was awful, and he was awful to work with - very passive aggressive, and downright bitchy.

Most of the cast of In Living Color didn't go on to do the things they were capable of doing. The weakest cast member, Jim Carrey, got the megafame from that show.

He was brought in to ruin the CBS drama "Martial Law" after his talk show was through. He was introduced as a comedic sidekick and ratings plummeted.

[quote]Most of the cast of In Living Color didn't go on to do the things they were capable of doing. The weakest cast member, Jim Carrey, got the megafame from that show.
Excuse me? I think you're forgetting someone.

Miss Whorepez

He said he left to be a father 12 years ago and guess what. his son is 12 and Arsenio has been a doting dad for 12 years.

[quote] Arsenio has been a doting dad for 12 years
once a month or so....for 12 years

No, he is the sole custodian of his son.

since when r46? really? I used to work at a place he came into....(this was like 6 years ago) there was a woman who seemed to bring the kid in and then he would "drop in" for a while...maybe this is another kid.

Maybe that one was not his kid.

I guess he could have been dating the mom....

r47

Arsenio was a crap show. Just so happened to coincide with the early 90's craze of being black was cool (sort of like now with LGBT). And on top of it, he is racist. He tried to make Vanillia Ice look stupid (unfortuantley, VI didnt need help with that) but ended up looking like a bullying asshole. Saw him at a Dodger game, rooting for the Mets. Wanted to take him to the parking lot. Wasnt funny then and wont be funny now. All he was is Eddie Murphy's butt monkey.

I would love to see his size 13s in some black fuck-me pumps with fishnets and red toenail polish. I would lick every corn before burying my face in his bulging panties and satin brassiere.

His career tanked the night he sat on the arm of the couch when he interviewed Magic Johnson....you could see his eyes getting bigger & bigger as Magic explained how he'd gotten HIV...you could just see Arsenio counting back & worrying.
He's so over.....so 1980s, no one will watch his new talk show.
Fuck him.

Glad he's back. On tonight's show will be Chris Tucker, Ice Cube and Nas.
Arsenio's show was great back in the day because it didn't cater to the boring middle American audience. People in their 20s and teens and a lot of non-white fans enjoyed watching the show. I hope the new one does well but it's a different time now. Everything in pop culture has become more white again...

I'm sure there were ratings, pay, distributor issues, but it sounds like he really wanted to be a father. I didn't even know he had a kid until this thread. Sounds like he was desperate to have a kid and the "girlfriend" has conveniently gone away. In the absence of having a mother around, who does he turn to for parenting advice? Why, his good friend Will Smith.

"He said he left to be a father 12 years ago"
Did he just finish breast-feeding him?

Didn't the popularity of his show also inspire a ton of other late night competitors? Seems like there was a glut of them for awhile, just like the glut of daytime talk shows in the late 80s-early 90s. I guess part of it was Letterman moving to CBS and Conan taking his place at NBC. I just remember for awhile there were a ton of competing late night talk options.
Dennis Miller had a late night show for awhile in the very early 90s that I liked (before his HBO show and before he turned to the conservative darkside.) And Jon Stewart had a traditional talk show on MTV before moving on to "The Daily Show."

Just earrings are fabulous

[quote]Most of the cast of In Living Color didn't go on to do the things they were capable of doing. The weakest cast member, Jim Carrey, got the megafame from that show.
I don't think that's entirely true. Besides Jennifer Lopez, there was also Jamie Foxx. And Damon Wayans did very well for a while.